


Lazarus

by Silentevenings (orphan_account)



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 01:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10064336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Silentevenings
Summary: Tori reunites with Tamara years laterfair warning, Tom is dead before this fic starts





	

“Tammy its been a long time,” her smug voice cuts into Tamara’s head like a surgical scalpel. Cool, clear, cold. She’s standing a few feet away from her, in full Red Leader attire, with two lackeys hovering nearby. One holds an umbrella over her. Her cool slate grey eyes meet Tamara’s black depths.

“Tamara,” she grits, clutching her injured arm as she attempts to huddle against the wall. Make herself smaller. Make herself seem like less of a threat. Until she gets close enough that she can close the distance before anyone can stop her.

“What’s that?” Tori says leaning in closer. Right on plan. Tamara turns to fully face her, still curled up against the wall. Raindrops drip down from her bangs onto her face. From Tori’s perspective it might just look like she was crying. There were no more tears to be shed over her. Not today, not ever.

“I said,” she began in a flat tone, as she slipped her injured hand into her pocket “it’s Tamara. My friends call me Tammy. And as I reminded you before I almost killed you last time, I. Am. Not. Your. Friend,” Tammy said, carefully enunciating each word.

Something flickered across Tori’s face, something almost inhuman. Whether it was mania, rage, grief, Tamara had no idea. What she did know was that Tori was within arm’s length of her now. Tamara grips it in her pocket. It’s hard. Cold. Like the owner of the neck it’s about to meet.

She looks at Tori for a long moment. Hand still in pocket. Tori is looking back at her with this unreadable expression. She was always shit at reading Tori. Tori however, could read her with ease, always knew how to get in her head. It was part of why she had loved her. It was also almost entirely why she hated her. Because she had been there, inside her head, under her skin, so connected it was like their blood veins were part of the same circuit.

And one day, Tori had slid a knife under her ribs and cut that part out of her to take with her out the door. 

Tori lashes out and her first swipe catches Tori by surprise. She gets a nice clean cut on the previously unmarred side of her face. Tori stumbles back and is on her arse, hands deep in the ooze of mud that had been ever rising since the rain began. Tamara feels a hand on her shoulder and something cold on her neck.

She knows what it is. She’s going to die here. Sinking into the mud in an alley way with the rest of the disposable goods in this city. She always knew it would end like this. Cold, alone, so alone that the ache pervades her very bones. She strikes out one last time and goes for Toris clothed wrist. It’s a crapshoot but she hits her mark, and she feels a pang of something that almost resembles joy.

Until she hears the horrible, spine tingling screech of metal on metal. Then it’s a heavy blow to the back of her neck. She’s sent sprawling into the mud, nose and mouth filling up with black dirty water. She’s choking, drowning. Her knife is gone and she is left defenseless, half blind, and aspirating in filth.

She feels a hand in her hair. It yanks her face up, out of the street. She sucks in a deep breath and comes face to face with Tori’s livid visage.

“What exactly were you attempting there?” Tori seethed.

“I was looking to relieve you of duty, ma’am,” Tori smirked. The smile falls from her face when she feels a cool grip around her throat. Tori’s metal hand is resting just above her collar bone. She strokes Tamara’s throat with her thumb, softly, gently, like she would stroke her back some nights when Tamara woke up in a cold sweat from dreaming about the past. 

For an odd moment, she back there again. In that house where her biggest worry was keeping her relationship on the down low from their friends. When Tori was her biggest safeguard. She’s looking at her again, looking at the familiar face, feeling all these familiar emotions that feel so off now. It’s like opening a scrapbook only to remember everyone in it is dead now, a possession of the past. That part of her is gone into the ether, no Lazarus miracle can bring it back.

“I wish the rest of you had burned in that robot,” its out before she can even think about the content of her words, and suddenly that hand is a crushing force on her windpipe. Black spots dance in her vision and a wheeze somewhere between a desperate scream and a maniacal laugh makes it way out of her mouth before everything goes dark.  
_____________________________________________________________________________  
The first thing she feels when she wakes up is excruciating pain radiating from her neck. She tries to sit up only to find that she is hand cuffed to the metal headboard of the bed she is lying in. At the sound of her moving, a guard comes in. One of the two lackeys from last night. She has long curly brown hair and a soft face.

“I recommend you don’t move much. You have sustained extreme damage to your trachea. Frankly I am impressed they were able to open your airway again. Miracles of modern science right?” The girl gives her a small smile which she doesn’t return. She tries to tell her to go fuck herself but only a soft wavering note comes out. It’s followed by a rush of agony.

“I don’t recommend doing that. It’s going to be a while before you can talk and attempting to do so may only exacerbate your injury,” the girl says, placing a hand on Tamara’s back. Tamara shrugs it off. The girl sighs.

“Let me give you a piece of advice. Tori is unstable at best most days. Don’t push her. It was remarkable she didn’t just slaughter you immediately. I actually think she only intended to make you pass out, its just she has a hard time gauging pressure with her inorganic hand. Either way, what she wants and what she does when she is in a rage are two completely separate things. Don’t make her cross the line, her actions are more in your hands than they are in hers.”

With that the girl got up and turned to go. Tamara caught her hand as she was going. The girl turned and looked at her. Tamara drew a question mark on her palm.

“My name?”

Tamara nodded. If she was going to make it out of this alive, she would need allies. The girl smiled

“It’s Patricia.”

Tamara turned her hand over and shook it.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you too.”

Hours passed and Tamara jingled the chain rhythmically to keep herself busy, drumming out various beats. She examined the room she was in. It was grey on all four walls, one of which contained a tiny window close to the ceiling that let in a slot of light. She watched the square of light travel across the floor and onto the far wall, turning a flushed shade of pink before disappearing. 

Every once in a while Patricia, or the other lackey, whose name she had learned was Paula, came in to check on her and see if she needed to use the bathroom.

Around dinner time a plate of food was carried in by the woman herself.

“How’s your throat?”

Tamara looked at her with a withering glare before going back to stare at the ceiling.

“I brought you some dinner,” Tori said offering her the tray. Tamara was hungry, but she wanted no favors done for her by the woman in front of her. So she knocked the tray onto the floor where a bowl of soup and cup of water upended themselves. She stared at Tori’s face, waiting for a reaction.

“Mmm, I see. Guess you’re not hungry,” Tori said, clearly knowing otherwise. 

Tamara jingled her handcuff impatiently.

“Let you go? I don’t think so. You have shown that you are a menace to yourself and others,” Tori said.

Tamara could have screamed at the irony.

Tori looked at her for a long moment, then turned to leave. “Hopefully you’ll be hungry by tomorrow,” she called, flipping the light switch as she left, consuming Tamara in darkness.

Through the small window she caught sight of the rising moon and watched it until it left her frame of sight. Eventually sleep caught her in its grasp and carried her out of the grey room with its slotted window.

She has this dream that she’s drowning slowly, watching bubbles come out of her mouth and break the surface a few feet above her, one after another. Part of her is just content to be there, her lungs are screaming but she doesn’t care. She’s ready. And then there are hands on her, grasping her from above and pulling her up, all the way up alongside the dancing crystalline bubbles and when she finally breaks the surface and draws in her first breath, she pulls in another mouthful of water. The surface of the water is gone and she finds herself even deeper down in the water than she was before.

Tamara wakes in a cold sweat. She curls up into a ball and cries until the pain in her throat forces her to stop and get a handle on her emotions. She stares into darkness until slowly a square of light fades into view on the floor and she can make out the four corners of the room.

Eventually the door opens and Patricia comes in.

“Are you alright? Your face is blotchy, are you in pain? Do you need another dosage of medicine?”

Tamara shakes her head at the barrage of questions.

“Okay well, here is breakfast. I highly suggest you eat it because I have orders to insert an IV if you skip another meal.”

Tamara sighs and holds out her hands, waiting for the tray to be placed in it. It contains a glass of milk and what looks like some sort of thin broth. She wrinkles her nose.

“Yeah sorry, but you won’t be ready for solids for quite a while,” Patricia said.

Tamara shrugged and opted to drink the milk first.

“Were you two friends at some point? You and… her?”

Tamara finishes her glass and looks at the other woman. Seeing no sign of any emotion except intrigue, she shakes her head. Her and Tori were never really friends. They hated each other as kids, antagonizing and beating the shit out of each other. They had to be separated as early as kindergarten when they nearly clawed each other to shreds over a box of crayons. Then Tamara’s twin brother passed away in a car accident her sophomore year of highschool and like a switch Tori was there, as something more, far more than a friend.

Nothing could ever fill the hole left by Tom. Not even Tori. But her leaving widened it. Tamara looked at the tray at the thin broth sitting calmly before her. She dipped a spoon in it and began to eat that too. The warmth felt hallow in her stomach which felt like it had dropped to the floor.

“I don’t understand you two. You aren’t related. You weren’t friends. You aren’t a rebel with secret intel. What exactly are you to Tori?”

Tamara stopped eating for a minute and let out a wheezing laugh, shrugging her shoulders. Fuck if she knew. They were lovers at one point, but now, without the light, the warmth, the love, what were they? Bitter.

Tori didn’t appear at all until a week later. In that time span Tamara was allowed to be uncuffed from her bed to prevent her from getting bedsores. She spent most of the day pacing back and forth, examining the room, looking at her options. The window was small. Very small. But with her slender frame and small hips she might be able to make it through. The only issue was the height. She could barely grasp the ledge of the sill with her finger tips, let alone lift her full body weight. For now she wrote off that method of escape.

When Tori did arrive, she came, a nurse was in tow.

“Tamara, she is going to have a look at your throat,” Tori said, looking at the wall instead of at her. The nurse was a young man with short black hair and a broad chest. He had soft brown eyes. He reminded her of Ell. Didn’t that make her heart ache.

Cool hands probed at her throat gently. Upon request she opened her mouth.

“She’s coming along fine. Her voice should be coming back in about another week or two. Around the same time frame she can start solids again.”

“Thank you, you are dismissed,” Tori said, still staring at the same spot on the wall. After the nurse had left her gaze slid to Tamara. Slowly she reached out to touch Tamara’s face with her inorganic hand. Despite her desire to be stoic, Tamara flinched away.

“Shhhh, it’s okay, I had them make a new model and attach it to my nerve endings so I can feel textures. Not as well as my other arm, but its better than nothing, it helps. Sometimes I bruise myself doing stupid shit like putting on clothes. I’ve even made my scalp bleed by accident when I tried brushing my hair,” her voice was light. Conversational. It was like they were at a park somewhere, chatting and catching up, instead of in a cramped room with one window and one of them was there involuntarily. 

“I didn’t mean to,” her breath was a little shaky as she took a deep inhale to try and compose herself. “I just wanted you to stop trying to kill me, and I wanted you to listen, for once in your life. But I- I went too far. I-,” her voice trailed off, cracking and turning into a little high note. It was something that happened rarely when she lost her composure.

“I thought I’d killed you.”

Tamara just smiled. Too fucking bad she’d missed her mark.

“Don’t do that. I know you Tamara, you think you’d be better off dead,” Tori’s expression darkened. “I’d drag you back from the pits of hell before I let you die under my care.”

With that Tori lightly placed her hand on Tamara’s cheek. Tamara shivered at the cold touch of metal, but otherwise didn’t move. A moment later Tori was gone.

A week later Tori was called away on “important business”, whatever that meant. Tamara’s voice had returned, but she could only whisper and not for long periods of time. When Tori came to say goodbye Tamara merely whispered “fuck off” and turned away to face the wall.

She felt a soft touch on her back, and then it was gone. Tamara decided she would be gone before Tori made it back from whatever mission she was on. At her next meal she broke a plate. She hid a thin shard under her pillow and whispered an apology when Patricia came to collect her utensils. As soon as she was gone Tamara started dragging the shard against the stone floor. She made sure to make the scratch marks under her bed so they wouldn’t be noticeable and she could chance blaming it on the person who stayed there before her.

Three days later she had dual sided tool. On one side the ceramic was flat and thick, while on another it was thin and sharp. A screwdriver and a shank. Over the course of the next night she stared working the screws out of the door. By the time the moon had rose above her window, she had one screw left. As she took the last screw out she caught the knob as it fell. However there was nothing she could do to stop the other knob from clattering to the ground. Wincing at the noise, she pushed the door open. She was greeted by a stretch of long grey hallway with identical doors. She turned around to face her door and saw the word SOLITARY printed in large block letters. Down to her left she caught sight of what appeared to be a stairwell. Closing her door and picking up the knob, Tamara crept down towards the stairs. She followed them until she reached a door that read basement. Guessing she had gone too far, she went back up one flight. In the distance she saw a beam of light. A flashlight.

She ducked back into the stairwell and waited until the shadows on the walls faded completely as the light went further and further away. Tamara crept out into the hallway again. Now she was surrounded by doors with name plates. She read them as she passed, stopping as she came across Tori’s. She tried the knob to find it unlocked. Pushing it open she saw a neat office. There was a desk with pristinely stacked papers and a large window behind it, an outdated computer and about two to three filing cabinets. She shut the door behind her and stepped in. On the desk she saw a picture of Tori with her twin, who had gone missing sometime last year and had yet to resurface. In another frame was a picture of herself, standing on the beach looking out at the water, back turned as the sun dipped down into the horizon. 

She had never known Tori had taken that picture. It must have been sometime after college, maybe a month or two before Tori disappeared. Tamara was better than that. She could end things clearly and cleanly. She could end things now.

Tamara slid it out of its frame and tucked it into her pocket. She could leave a note. A goodbye. Tori had never left a note. An explanation.

“Dear Tori,

I wanted to say, thank you, even after all this time, for the comfort and the memories you gave me. A part of me will always love you. Will always miss you. We were something more than friends. But I can’t express the love I have for you in any other manner but hatred. We will never be anything but destructive to each other. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, and I don’t want to be the person responsible for your misdeeds. Be better.

Goodbye,

Tamara

She thought of Tom for a brief moment. That ache in the pit of her stomach returned full force like someone had knocked the wind out of her. Tori would become just like him, another photo to put away in the back of her mind when the reality of what had come to pass was too much for her to face. She would collect dust and sink to the bottom of the river that was the memory of time.  
With that she tucked the note into the frame. She walked over to the window and opened it. Fresh air greeted her and she took a deep inhale. Out into the night, out under the sky, an open and wide world called to her. Tamara felt like she could breathe again. She took off running, her bare feet eating up ground under a full moon sky. She ran until the concrete ended and gave way to soft grass. In the distance she thought she saw far off lights, maybe a city or a freeway. Who knew? Who cared?

She felt like she was in her dream again, watching those bubbles travel up in their shivering prism colored shapes. Signaling her way out. She was no longer content to just watch, or wait for hands outstretched to come grab her. This time she would chase them down herself. And she would find a way to breathe again.

**Author's Note:**

> send me asks @ plsnskanks.tumblr.com
> 
> So this is definitely more serious than what I usually write. Its a personal project. I dunno, there might be another chapter, probably from Tori's perspective, probably ends happier than this, though I consider this a happy ending as far as they go


End file.
